


Sing You a Lullaby (Where You Die in the End)

by CinnaAtHeart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Asexual Character, Bucky Barnes Feels, F/M, Ghost Bucky Barnes, Happy Ending, I swear, M/M, Mutual Pining, bucky haunts darcy, for maximum spoopy effect, gothic/romanticism, i suggest reading this alone in the dark, it is entirely possible this will be the fic that sends me to hell, major character death warning mostly for Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-07-22 01:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7412767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnaAtHeart/pseuds/CinnaAtHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you believe in ghosts?” The words escape her mouth before she even realises what she’s asking.</p><p>A long pause.</p><p>“I do,” Thor answers eventually, and Darcy straightens in her chair, as though somehow that will make her listen better. “In my country… there are many who believe that some souls are cursed; trapped between this world and the next. Some can find their peace, but others…”</p><p>“Are stuck there?”</p><p>“Aye,” the big man rumbles, and though the room is cold, his voice seems to warm her to her core. “Some remain trapped for an eternity, clinging to reality by their bones.”</p><p> </p><p>(Or, the wintershock ghost fic that no one asked for, but is getting anyway.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> (Title is from 'Milk and Cookies, by Melanie Martinez, but there's not really any parallels between the song and this fic)
> 
> So this fic was inspired by [this tumblr post](http://cinnaatheart.tumblr.com/post/145073425092/latessitrice-mmmkay-so-i-am-getting-some), which gave me disgustingly strong lady of the lake feels. The lovely and talented latessitrice suggested I actually write it and- well, here you are, with 7K+ words for part one. 
> 
> This is a no powers AU.

 

 

>  
> 
>  
>     
>     
>     I did send you a note on the wind for to read,
>     Our names there together must have fallen like a seed,
>     To the depths of the soil, buried deep in the ground,
>     On the wind, I could hear you, call my name, held the sounds.
>     I am lost. 
>     (I am lost.)  
>     > 
>     _In This Shirt,_ The Irrepressibles

 

 

##  Sunday

Darcy get the news on a Sunday, right around the time when her family would be coming home from church.

“ _Evelyn is dead,_ ” Kathy- her grandmother’s oldest friend- tells her over the phone, the connection hazy and filled with static. Darcy nods and says back, ‘thank-you’, and ‘yes, I’ll take care of it’ and hangs up before Kathy can hear the shaking in her voice.

She moves through her apartment in a state of numbness, texting Jane to tell her she won’t be at work for the next week or so and books a flight to Maine for the next day. She packs her bag quickly, and then, jobs done, she gathers her grams’ crocheted blanket and fingerless gloves together from her bedroom and retreats to the sofa where she loudly and violently allows herself to break.

 

##  Monday

Home.

Darcy never really thought of Bishop as home.

It’s too quiet for her; too isolated and empty for a girl like Darcy, who grew up in the city where no one knew her name and no one cared. The town is like a fishbowl, where everybody knows each other’s business and Darcy’s always felt trapped by it, suffocated by the cut and paste houses and the old wooden school with their out-dated materials and overbearingly strict teachers, the shopping strip and the pond with delusions of grandeur that backs onto her grandparent’s house.

She has fond memories of the place, of course; her grandparents were nothing if not kind, good-hearted people. Darcy has many a golden memory from her early childhood and teenagerdom spent lazing on the old wooden pier behind the house, turning red in the summer sun, or running through her granddad’s veggie patch, taking care not to touch the garden beds. One particular time, she remembers breaking open a yellow tomato ( _yellow!_ To an eight year old Darcy, the sight blew her mind) and smearing its guts across a sheet of paper towel, filled with the childish hope of somehow growing the seeds back in her mother’s tiny apartment.

Of course, perhaps she’d like Bishop more were it not for her return after her mother’s death. Distraught and alone, riddled with teenage angst and resentment for the changes thrust upon her, it had taken months just to open up to her grandparents. And though Darcy grew to love the man and woman who’d lost their only child but still found it in their hearts to adore her, she’s always been less than interested in the town itself.

Home, as her grams used to say, is a feeling, not a place.

She arrives at 12 Willow Point Road late on Monday night, the rented car uncharacteristically silent, her typical music nowhere to be found. The space inside her head- so often filled with music- is empty; an endless void of static, just as it’s been since Kathy called her yesterday.

The house looms before her, lit by the headlights of her car. The windows remind her of teeth that glitter and reveal nothing.

It looks vacant already, through Evelyn Lewis is barely 48 hours dead and the thought alone has Darcy curled up over the steering wheel with pain. Her grams had been the last of her family left, and somehow Darcy had convinced herself that it’d be decades before she’d have to lose her too.

Darcy turns the car off and the lights fade away slowly. The house falls back into the shadows, white paint a deep blue colour in the darkness. The windows transform into gaping mouths, ready to swallow her whole. She climbs out of the car slowly, sighing heavily with relief as she stretches muscles that have been confined to the seat for far too long.

The place is unnervingly quiet. Her boots crunch on the gravel driveway, loud in the heavy silence and it makes her oddly self-conscious, as though walking through a library. Or a morgue. In the dark, without her grandparents, the house doesn’t feel like a home, though the shoes left on the porch and the key beneath the doormat are exactly as Darcy remembers them. The metal is cold in her hand, and dread sits heavy in her gut as she turns the key in the lock and opens the door.

It swings open silently- Evelyn had always been a stickler for these kinds of things- and Darcy fumbles blindly for the light switch. The flights flicker into existence- a warm and old-fashioned honey-gold, and the waterlilies and emerald leaves on the light fittings cast multi-coloured shadows across the ceiling. Darcy’s always found them beautiful- and not just because she knows her grams made them.

The foyer is unchanged; in almost identical condition to how it had been at Christmas, and for a moment Darcy tricks herself into thinking that she’ll hear a muted ‘Sugarcake? That you?’ from the kitchen before she remembers what Kathy found in here yesterday morning.

The thought that her grams’ soul departing here sets her teeth on edge, and she wonders how on Earth she’s going to manage living here _alone_ for a whole week and a half. Maybe she should have taken Jane up on the offer and dragged her along after all.

“Home sweet home,” she sighs heavily, and leaves the door ajar to stumble back outside and grab her bags. The heavy front door closes quietly behind her, and Darcy toes her boots off, trying hard not to think of how the last time she did this, it was Christmas and Evelyn Lewis was greeting her with a happy smile and a thin-armed and brittle hug.

Darcy could really use one of them about now.

But the house is empty and Evelyn is gone. No one left but Darcy now.

She walks slowly through the lower floor of the house, flicking on all of the lights she can find, as though somehow they can make the place feel less empty, but all she succeeds in doing is emphasizing her grandmother’s absence. Darcy feels like an intruder in someone’s tomb. A monument to the dead that should not be disturbed.

She lingers in the doorway to the living room, staring absently at the yellow floral-print lounge and threadbare Turkish carpet. The bookshelves are fit to bursting, books stacked on top of themselves, crammed together with no rhyme or reason. The Lewis family has never been known for their organisational skills.

Her gaze falls onto a plastic bag sitting on the coffee table beside her grandmother’s favourite chair, and curious, Darcy wanders over to it, reaching down to undo the loose knot. The plastic rustles loudly in the silent room, and her fingers brush against something warm and soft. Her grandma’s knitting, she realises, and Darcy swallows thickly. She collapses into the chair and pulls the knitting out- careful not to let the needles slip free.

It’s a scarf; pale grey and blood red and so impossibly soft that Darcy’s heart aches. She has a scarf of her own made of the same fabric, and the thought of her grams working on another in the days- the _hours_ \- before her death hurts far more than she expects.

“Fuck,” she breathes, eyes burning. She’d hoped to keep it together until after the funeral on Thursday, but the idea of the scarf never being finished hurts almost too much to bear. She’s never going to see her again- “ _Fuck!_ ”

Darcy presses the knitting to her face and breathes in the faint scent of lavender and wool, and doesn’t bother holding back the sobs clutching at her throat.

##  Tuesday

Darcy doesn’t know what time it is when she finally drags herself upstairs to get some sleep, but whatever time it is, it’s evidently not early enough, because she wakes the next morning feeling groggy and clumsy. The light through her window is dim, and she spies a gloomy expanse of grey sky between the gaps in the lace curtains; there’s no telling if it will rain or not today. She drags herself out of bed, stumbling downstairs to make herself a coffee; black, three sugars.

She stares out at McCreedy’s Lake as she waits for the water to boil. The house backs straight onto it, with a short wooden pier and an aged and rotting boat shed that has never been used, for as long as Darcy can remember. In the dim morning light, the place is still and quiet; a bird warbles sweetly at the foot of the gnarled and thorny lemon tree beside the shed, and another sorts through the mulch beside it for food. The sight of them makes her smile.

The kettle finishes its boil and she readies her coffee, picking it up and opens the back door, stepping out onto the veranda. The cool morning air is brisk, and the hairs on her arms raise in response, but in her thick cardigan Darcy decides that she’s warm enough.

She immediately regrets the decision when she steps out onto the lawn; the grass is sodden with dew, and _cold_ \- cold enough that by the time she reaches the pier, her bare feet are numb and burning all at once. Darcy huffs a sigh of relief as she steps onto the jetty, though the uneven and unkempt wood has her treading carefully, wary of splinters. She has vivid memories of being nine years old and bawling her eyes out over the half-inch long splinter stuck in her foot.

She walks down to the edge and sits, legs hanging off the edge, mug of coffee clutched between both hands to keep her fingers warm. Her breath fogs lightly, and steam rises steadily from the cup.

Darcy looks out across the lake. It’s not very big; more of an extremely large pond, really, but as a child, it had always seemed so unsurpassably _huge._ Nostalgia and contentment slows her thoughts and dulls her grief for a time and she sips at her coffee, watching the water in something close to a trance. The water is as calm and still as her mind, the breeze non-existent, and the trees that cling to the edge of its banks are cast back in perfect imitation. Birds coo and warble softly around her, and in the distance she can hear the ever present _fwoarr_ of the motorway, several miles out. Fog clings to the outer edges of the lake, turning the world hazy and indistinct. She sighs, setting her coffee down beside her.

And starts, shocked.

There is a body in the water.

 He floats, motionless, amongst the waterlilies and duckweed. He is naked. Pale, with sunken eyes and dark hair that swims about his face and bare shoulders like seaweed. The water around him is still and serene, and reflects the shape and colour of the lilies flawlessly, creating mirror-images of strange, spherical flowers painted pale pinks and white and deep, emerald green, like the tiles in her grandmother’s bathroom.

His body casts no reflection.

“What?” she breathes, and moves to stand, coffee forgotten.

The corpse _opens its eyes_.

Darcy yelps, falling back down on the pier. A sharp pain runs like fire up her arm and she curses, glancing down in irritation to inspect the long splinter sticking into the meaty flesh of her palm. She glances up again, and gapes.

He’s gone.

Nothing to say for his presence but the faintest of ripples on the water, as though a soft breeze has blown across its surface.

 

* * *

 

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Darcy asks that night over the phone, the words escaping her mouth before she even realises what she’s asking. She could kick herself, but closes her eyes and hopes for the best all the same.

Thor is quiet for a long time. Darcy doesn’t know what she expects; a renouncement? An unexpected word of wisdom? He’s always been uncannily good at lifting her spirits, but Darcy isn’t even sure if what she saw was real, or just a grief-stricken hallucination. A waking dream.

“ _I do,_ ” he says eventually, and Darcy straightens in her chair, as though somehow that will make her listen better. “ _In my country… there are many who believe that some souls are cursed; trapped between this world and the next, unable to move on. Some can find their peace, but others…_ ”

“Are stuck there?”

“ _Aye_ ,” the big man rumbles, and though the room is cold, his voice seems to warm her straight to her core. “ _Some remain trapped for an eternity, clinging to reality by their bones_.”

“Well…” she murmurs, feeling vaguely unsettled.

“ _I admit I have not seen one_ ,” Thor confesses, “ _so I cannot prove their truth, but I know of many who have. If I saw one, I would not doubt their existence_.”

“What can you do about them?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” he says, sounding sad. “ _Bar destroying their spirit, there is nothing. They are the restless dead. Gods willing, they will turn to spirits and minor gods; patrons of the land they inhabit… Sometimes, they may wish evil upon others, but the human soul is at its heart a pure thing. A soul must be tortured- deliberately and with malcontent in mind- for them to become malevolent. Most, so the stories say, are simply lonely_.”

She nods, forgetting for a time that he can’t see her. “That sounds sad.”

“ _It is, Darcy. Theirs is a sad and cursed existence, for the most part_.” He sighs, and over the phone it sounds like a rumbling gust of wind. Or perhaps it’s the breeze, picking up outside the living room window. “ _Why do you ask?_ ”

“I thought I…” she trails off. Laughs. “It’s nothing,” she lies. It doesn’t pay to claim she’s seeing ghosts two days before her grandmother’s funeral. “I was just curious.”

“ _I understand,_ ” Thor says kindly, and Darcy doesn’t doubt that he does. In the background, she hears Jane asking who he’s talking to and he murmurs back an answer. The sound of a scuffle ensues and Darcy laughs again despite herself.

“Goodbye, Thor!” she says loudly and his returning chuckle is muffled but still evident.

“ _Take care, Darcy!_ ” he calls back, and Jane cackles in victory, voice close to the phone now.

“ _Suck it, Thor!_ ” she crows, and Darcy smiles softly at the couple’s antics. “ _Hey Darcy._ ”

“Hiya Jane-the-brain. How’s things?”

Jane harumphs, sounding put out. “ _I couldn’t find the notes on-”_

“Did you check the filing cabinet?”

“ _I did!_ ”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Third drawer down?”

An elongated pause. Jane coughs. “ _Uh- no._ ”

Darcy crosses her legs beneath her blanket and glances over at the window. She sees only dark shapes outside, the garden swaying with the wind. “That’s where they’ll be.”

Jane coughs again. “ _Right- sorry. What about the spare spectrometer?_ ”

“In the broken fridge.” She hears the sound of Jane wrenching the door open and a faint crow of delight.

“ _Darcy, you are a godsend_.”

She huffs a laugh, closing her eyes and tries to imagine she’s back home. “Listen, Jane. I don’t know if-”

“ _Hey_ ,” Jane interrupts, and Darcy swallows thickly. “ _You stay there as long as you need to_.”

“But what about-”

“ _Tch_ ,” Jane scoffs. “ _This research isn’t going anywhere. And I mean- I know it’s a hard-to-believe concept, but Thor and I are adults_. _We_ can _, theoretically, look after ourselves._ ”

Darcy laughs. “I guess you are,” she murmurs, and pulls the blanket a little tighter around herself.

 

* * *

 

It’s only when their conversation has petered out and Darcy says her goodbyes to Jane that she realises that she left the mug of coffee outside on the pier.

“Shit,” she says into the oppressive silence, and stares glumly out the window. She can’t see much beyond her reflection; just the dark and indistinct shapes of trees and the faint reflection of the waxing moon on the water. Darcy huffs a sigh.

“It’s probably nothing,” she murmurs, even as dread grows in the pit of her stomach. “Even if it _wasn’t_ , Thor said they’re harmless.”

 _Mostly_ _harmless_ , her traitorous brain reminds her and Darcy curses again. Curiosity and fear war viciously in her mind, but in the end nosiness wins. Darcy has always been an inquisitive individual, and, she reasons, she’s not about to let the theoretical existence of a theoretical spirit who could theoretically want to harm her, stop her from doing what she’s always done.

And Darcy isn’t afraid of the dark.

The metal handle is cold in her hand, the air outside cool, with the faint scent of wood smoke. Crickets screech around her, falling silent as she walks past them, only to start again with renewed vigour as soon as she’s passed. The wet grass feels like ice beneath her bare feet and Darcy curses the misfortune of once again forgetting to put on shoes.

“ _Idiot_ ,” she chastises herself, and dashes across the yard on light feet, arms wrapped around her waist- for defence against the cold or fear, she doesn’t know, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference either way. She slows as she reaches the jetty, and walks across the aged and roughened wood carefully, remembering the splinter from this morning keenly.

The lake is calm and lifeless, the water so still that for a moment Darcy fools herself into thinking it a pane of glass. Her eyes scan its banks, rimmed with black trees and darker shadows and the dread in her stomach rises, like bile, wrapping around her throat like a lover’s caress.

“Hello?” she asks the water, tentative. Her voice is barely even a whisper, soft and raspy, but it unnerves her all the same.

“ _Hssshhhhhhaaaaaaa,_ ” the wind answers, blowing through the trees. Leaves flutter through the air and Darcy is reminded that winter will be here soon; most of the leaves already turning a multitude of reds, oranges and yellows. She swallows nervously.

“I’m- uh- I’m just here to grab my mug!” she calls, feeling stupid. There’s no answer, and she carries on talking, feeling a little stronger as she does. “It’s my grams’- or, it _was_ ,” she explains as she walks, “I’d- uh- rather not lose it, you know?” She can just make out its shape at the edge of the pier; exactly where she left it. “Thank God.”

She half-skips the rest of the way, eager to be back inside where it’s warm- though not necessarily homey- but her footsteps slow again when she reaches it, pulling into a stop in front of the cup.

“What…?” she murmurs, confused. She crouches down before it, heart thundering in her ears as she reaches out to pick up the mug. It’s cold- like _ice_ \- far colder that its surrounds.

But, more importantly, it’s also _empty_.

She clenches her jaw, the dread from before wrapping tightly around her throat again. Darcy glances around the lake, but there’s nothing to see; nothing but the crickets and roosting birds for company.

She stands. Backs away from the edge of the pier.

“ _Hshaaaaahh,_ ” the wind moans to her and chills run down her spine. She glances back down at the mug. It’s clean; not even a dried rim of coffee at the bottom to speak of, and her unease grows.

In the distance, something _screams_.

“Shit,” Darcy breathes, and turns and flees; bare feet flying over the wood and wet grass as though there are wings on her ankles.

“ _HSHAAAAH!_ ” the wind cries behind her, gathering in strength, and Darcy curses loudly as she fumbles with the catch on the door, hot breath gathering in soft plumes of fog in front of her. She slips through, slamming the door behind her and leaning heavily against it, chest heaving as she clutches the mug in her shaking hands.

“What the hell?” she breathes, staring up in confusion at the warm fluorescent light on the ceiling. In the safety of the house, embarrassment quickly overtakes her fear. She feels like an idiot, freaking out over a goddamn _barn_ _owl_[1]. She’s heard more than a few over the years here, though their screams used to freak her out as a kid.

It screams again and she shudders, shoulders curling inwards despite herself. “Just an owl,” she reassures the fridge, as though somehow it will reply (it doesn’t). “Nothing weird about it. Perfectly normal.”

But….

She glances down at the mug, uneasy.

Darcy _knows_ that it was still half full of coffee when she saw… when she _imagined_ the man. “So what happened to the coffee?” she muses, and walks slowly over to the sink to leave it there. It’s still unnaturally cold.

It’s all so strange, Darcy thinks to herself when she goes to bed later that night. She doesn’t remember Bishop or the house ever being creepy when she was a child.

No.

Not creepy.

Just boring.

 

##  Wednesday

The next morning, Darcy comes out with two cups of coffee.

It’s an experiment, she tells herself. She just wants to see if something will happen again, or if it was just a random freak of nature. She sees no sign of her apparition, but the entire time she sits on the edge of the jetty, drinking her coffee slowly and hoping she can hide the trembling in her fingers, she can’t shake the sensation of being watched.

It makes her uneasy, the hairs on the back on her neck standing on edge as she sips at her coffee, eyes scanning the water for any signs of movement, but all she spies is the odd bird and ripple in the water, the late-morning light bright and warm. The second mug sits untouched beside her, and Darcy is suddenly overcome by the image of something reaching out from beneath the jetty to grab her hanging legs. She draws them up quickly, clenching her jaw nervously.

“Get it together,” she chastises herself. The lake is eerily quiet, but somehow her words seem to come out muffled, as though speaking through a blanket. She shivers, and works the hem of her sleeve higher up her hand. “Don’t know why you wanted to come back here if this place freaks you out.”

(A lie. Darcy knows exactly why she’s back here. It’s the same reason she ended up in New York with Jane, chasing after rainbows and things people insist don’t exist.)

“That curiosity of yours, girl,” she sighs heavily. “It’s gonna end up getting you hurt one day.”

The waters don’t reply and Darcy sighs again, draining what’s left of her coffee and standing carefully. She leaves the second coffee cup there, still full and untouched.

 _It’s an experiment_ , she tells herself again, trying hard not to feel like an idiot. But there’s that itchy feeling on the back of her neck- a familiar prickle that tells her someone is watching. Darcy’s hand tightens around the handle of her mug and she turns to face the house slowly, aiming for casual despite the hammering of her heart. And it’s funny, because it’s not as though the sensation is _hostile_ (how could it be with the sunlight shining down on her and the gentle rustle of the wind through the trees?) but she can’t shake that faint sense of unease settling in the pit of her gut.  

“The coffee is for you,” she says aloud, and Darcy is grateful that this is a private pier, because elsewise she’d look like a complete lunatic. “You can do whatever you want with it-” she pauses, frowning. “I mean, don’t _kill_ anyone with it, if that were- uh- possible.” She grimaces and brushes the back of her jeans as she quickly walks away. “If you _are_ even a ghost, I mean… You know what, I’m just shutting my mouth now.”

She glances back against her better judgement, and almost trips over herself in shock.

A man, standing at the edge of the water some thirty yards away, his form hazy and indistinct.

She stares, breath frozen in her chest. His image doesn’t waver, but there is something… off about him- like staring at an old photograph- too motionless to be real. It’s _him_ , though. The man she saw yesterday. The body in the water. He is clothed, this time, wrapped in darkness, his left arm still oddly blurred, as though someone has smeared a charcoal drawing.

And then-

And then she blinks, and the phantom is _gone._

“Shit,” Darcy cusses, turning around to face the water fully, heart hammering in her chest. “Fucking _shit!_ ” she backs away, swallowing back her fear. She clutches her mug to her chest, limbs feeling suddenly cold and stiff. “Nope,” she breathes, mind racing back to the raw terror of last night. “Nope, nope, _nope._ Leaving.”

And she does, the back of her neck itching from the weight of her spectre’s gaze.  

It’s not until she’s inside, heart in her throat, that she realises that this is the second time that she’s seen him during the day. An odd time for a ghost to be haunting, she thinks. Not that Darcy knows much about ghosts, but from what she remembers of folklore and movies, they’re meant to turn up at night, when their forms are hard to see and the imagination can run rampant.

Darcy ponders that as she leans heavily against the kitchen bench. It is indescribably strange- stranger still that she is seeing him _now_. Why now? Why not when she was younger? She’s _never_ seen anything out of the ordinary in Bishop when she was a child, but…

A fuzzy memory emerges from the depths of her mind, of a sleepover with some girl Darcy’d never really thought of as a friend. In the early hours of the morning they’d turned to ghost stories and Darcy has a faint recollection of her ‘friend’ telling her the legend of the Winter Soldier; a spirit that haunted the waters of Bishop, trailing ice and frost behind him like a heavy cloak and freezing naughty children who stay outside too long.

She clenches her hands on the cracked and aging melamine bench, remembering how cold the mug had been when she’d retrieved it last night. Sixteen year old Darcy hadn’t put much stock in the story, but now… it doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

She sighs heavily, staring out the window without really seeing anything. She needs to find out more, she thinks. Needs to find who this man is and who he used to be- it it’s even possible.

Darcy sighs again and straightens; she has things to do today. It doesn’t pay for her to be caught up in half-remembered ghost stories right now. She has to finalise the arrangements for her grandmother’s funeral and look into settling her will. Not that it should take much, what with Darcy being the sole survivor of the Lewis clan. As far as she knows, everything of her grams’ is being left of her.

Lucky Darcy.

 

 

 (When she returns to retrieve the mug late that afternoon- moves furtive and eyes nervous- the cup is empty once again, but for a thin layer of coffee at the bottom. It’s frozen solid, despite the relative warmth of the day, and only begins to melt when she takes it back to the house, far away from the water.)

 

##  Thursday

There is a man standing on her pier.

She can scarcely believe it, and for a moment she manages to trick herself into thinking he’s her ghost, until she realises the man is black and distinctly corporeal.

“What the fuck,” she breathes, staring out the kitchen window in surprise. It takes her far longer than it should for her to realise the man is as real as she is and Darcy pins it down to her sleep-addled brain. Her dreams last night were plagued by phantoms of family members, hovering silent and motionless in doorways, fading into smoke whenever she drew close. She woke convinced that the ache in her chest has become a permanent fixture.

And maybe it’s the remnant bad mood of her dreams that makes her suddenly angry, but Darcy can’t shake the righteous indignation that the intruder invokes. There shouldn’t _be_ anyone out there- this is her gram’s property, and somehow it feels like an unholy blasphemy to see a perfect stranger standing on her pier uninvited.

She storms over to the door, swinging it open with more force than is strictly necessary. “Hey!” she yells and the man starts with surprise, twisting around to find the source of her voice. “Hey, asshole! This is private property!”

The man faces the house fully and Darcy’s anger eases despite herself. His face is unfamiliar, but there’s something oddly calming about him- something friendly and kind in the lines of his face and he stills her impending wrath despite his startled expression.

Still. He _is_ trespassing. The lake may not be part of the Lewis property but the pier certainly is.

Darcy strides down the porch and across the grass with purpose, futilely trying to fuel her dying anger. “This is private property,” she reiterates with markedly less heat in her voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

The man blinks at her. “Um,” he says as she reaches him, backing away from her a step or two. “Evelyn let me come here?”

 _That_ pulls her short. Darcy clenches her jaw, blinking at him. “Grams let you come around?”

Something like recognition flickers across his face. “You’re _Darcy_ , aren’t you? Evelyn’s granddaughter? She talks about you a lot.”

Darcy nods slowly. “I’m sorry… I have no idea who you are.”

The man coughs in embarrassment and sticks out his hand. His grip is firm and warm, smile friendly and Darcy instantly feels a million times worse for yelling at him. “Sam Wilson. My partner and I moved next door about a year ago.”

Darcy’s eyes widen and she snaps her fingers, remembering her grams’ story from last Thanksgiving. “The pie maker? That pumpkin pie was a religious experience, dude. I still have dreams about it.”

Sam laughs, eyes crinkling around the edges. “That was actually Riley; he’s the culinary genius- I’ve only got your usual bachelor cooking skills.”

Darcy bites back a grin. “Well, you’d better thank him for me… any chance the two of you could come around with uh… more?” she glances away, feeling the good and happy mood of just moments ago already slipping away. “I could really use the pick me up.”

Sam’s gaze is sharp and canny. “Is Evelyn okay?” She flinches, and his expression turns worried. “What’s wrong?”

Her face crumples and _goddammit_ , if she can’t even manage to tell her neighbour about this, how in the ever living _fuck_ is she going to manage to speak the eulogy. “Grams… she, ah, she passed away,” she breathes, and covers her eyes with her hand like she can somehow shield herself from the sympathetic stare of a stranger.

Sam makes a soft sound at the back of his throat and rests a comforting hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “You have my condolences,” he tells her, eyes sad.

“Thanks,” she replies, and smiles at him shakily as she wrestles her emotions back under control. “It was a shock- an aneurysm, they told me,” she explains, and the curious look on his face clears. “They uh- they didn’t find her until Sunday, when she didn’t turn up to church.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Darcy laughs hollowly, the insincerity of it almost taking her by surprise. “What can you do?” she asks, shrugging as though somehow she can mask the pain that must be plastered across her face. “That’s just life, I guess… They tell me it would have been quick, at least.”

“Doesn’t make it easier.”

She bites at the inside of her cheek and shrugs again. “Such is life.” Darcy glances down at her feet- bare again, but it’s late enough in the morning that the worst of the dew has evaporated, and the grass is cool and soothing beneath her feet. “The funeral’s today,” she tells him. “It’s nothing big, but you and Riley are welcome to come- I’m sorry I didn’t get in contact earlier but-” she breaks off, breathing out shakily before squaring her shoulders and looking back up at Sam, “it’s hard, you know? I guess I’m kind of at a loss.”

The corner of his mouth twitches- not quite a smile of sympathy, but something close. “I get you. It never gets easier.”

She laughs at that, sharp and bitter. “Ain’t that the truth of it. The funeral’s at three- I um…” she glances back at the house. “I have a few spare invites inside, if you wanted to grab one.”

Sam nods. “We’d like that, thanks.”

Darcy leads the way back up the house, and pauses at the threshold. She flushes slightly, cheeks turning hot. “I’m uh- I’m sorry I yelled at you, by the way.”

Sam laughs, brushing away her apology with an ease that awes Darcy. “It’s nothing,” he says warmly, and follows her inside. She ducks her head, cheeks flushing deeper. “I’m imagine you’re going through some pretty tough stuff right now.”

 “Hah,” she says, glancing back through the kitchen window to the water beyond. The mug from yesterday sits untouched on the windowsill. “You don’t know the worst of it.”

 

* * *

 

The funeral is a quiet and unfussy affair; Evelyn’s coffin is surrounded by wreaths and flowers, ready to be cremated at some point in the near future. Darcy says her piece, only stammering with tears at the end, and she watches enviously as one by one her grams’ closest friends deliver stories with nary a single tear shed between them. She wonders how they manage it; wonders if age has turned their hearts to stone, or if it’s simply a matter of strength.

Afterwards, Darcy stands beneath the archway outside the church- green enamelled wire wrapped in roses that have no scent and emerald ribbons and straggling weeds- and lets every person shake her hand solemnly and offer her their condolences. She bears it all with the stoicism she wishes she could have found in the service, and smiles and thanks each of them for their kindness. The ritual- though familiar- feels worse than before, now that she is the only family member left, and all Darcy can think of as one by one her grams’ friends move past her, is how the last time she had to do this, there were two of them.

Sam and his partner Riley are the last of the procession, and she offers both of them a genuine smile for waiting so long. Riley easily navigates the uneven cobblestones in his wheelchair, the lines of his arms strong beneath his navy suit jacket.

“Sam,” she greets him, and lets him kiss her cheek as he takes her hand, his palm warm and callused. “And I’m guessing you’re Riley, the fabulous pie maker.”

Riley grins back. His grip is firm in hers, the calluses even more pronounced than Sam’s. “That’d be me.” He sobers, sighing heavily. “It’s a real shame to hear about Evelyn; she was an amazing woman.”

She huffs a laugh and looks away. “She was. She’ll be sorely missed.”

Riley’s smile mirrors the sympathy in his partner’s. “Your eulogy was beautiful.”

Darcy shrugs, glancing away. “Thanks.” She looks back at the couple, an idea materialising in her mind. “Say, did you two want to come back to mine? I’d- uh- rather not be alone tonight.”

Sam looks surprised. “Are you not having a Wake?”

She laughs, mirthless. “Lord- no. No, the Lewis’ never had much taste for those, and I don’t know if I could bear it even if they did.” Darcy grimaces. “I can’t promise you much; just vegetables and lentil soup. A lot of alcohol too, if you’re interested.”

Riley nods slowly. “Well if that’s the case, we’d love to. I’ve got an apple pie that needs baking; we’ll bring it along.”

Darcy makes a blissful sound. “That sounds heavenly. You’re welcome to stay the night too, if you’d like. There’s a bedroom downstairs you can use. How does six sound?”

“Sounds great, thank-you.”

She smiles, wringing her hands. It feels nice to have a purpose, even if only for the night. “I’ll see you then. I’m guessing you know where we are.” They may be neighbours, but there’s still a sizeable space between homes, separated by a thin copse of forest.

“I’m sure we can manage,” drawls Riley, the remnants of his country accent bleeding through, and she grins, bright and genuine. It fades when they depart, the hollow feeling in her chest returning.

“Congrats, Darcy,” she murmurs to herself. She’s the only one left at the church, besides a janitor, sweeping away a trail of dust, leaves and crushed flower petals. “Looks like you’ve made some friends.”

 

* * *

 

The pie is _to die for_.

Not that Darcy is surprised; the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving was amazing. The perfect balance of textures and spices and Riley’s apple pie is just the same. Darcy makes sure to make all the appropriate noises at the dish (easily the highlight of her day) and is determined to be unashamed when she goes back for seconds (she debates thirds, but Riley promises she can keep the leftovers so she refrains. She’ll have it for breakfast).

True to her promise, they drink a generous amount of alcohol (or rather, she and Sam do. Riley stops after his second glass), exhausting grams’ immediate stash of wine and making a start on her grandfather’s whiskey, preserved faithfully since his death in his old whiskey cabinet. Darcy doesn’t care for it, but she’s got no one else to share it with and it feels wrong to pass it on to someone else.

Riley is a local boy, as it turns out. He left Bishop the year before Darcy turned up, signing up for the Air Force in an attempt to escape the suffocating press of the backwater town, just as she had when she left for college as soon as she’d finished high school. His father died of lung cancer not long after he returned from his final (and ill-fated) tour in Afghanistan, and he and Sam returned to Bishop seeking a more sedate life after Riley recovered.

Darcy doesn’t know how they get onto it; one minute they’re talking about Riley’s mother and her love of crotchet, the next minute she’s asking what he knows about the Winter Soldier, her words slurring only a little as the question hangs in the air.

The fond smile on Riley’s face fades into one of confusion. “That’s an odd question,” he says slowly, studying her carefully. “Why would you want to know about that?”

Darcy shrugs, feigning disinterest. “I was just thinking about it the other day, and- well- folklore fascinates me.”

He takes a slow sip of his tea. “I don’t know everything about it,” he warns her. Darcy gives him a lopsided smile and stretches out across the couch, nursing her tumbler of whiskey on her stomach.

“You’re bound to know more than me.”

“Sorry,” Sam interrupts, glancing between the two of them, confused. “Who’s the Winter Soldier?”

“It’s a ghost story,” Riley explains to his partner. He sets his tea down on the coffee table. “I don’t know how old it is exactly, but it’s been around since at least the fifties, if my dad’s to be believed.” Darcy settles more comfortably into her chair, watching the older man with interest. She ignores the faint sound of the tree scratching at the glass outside.

“No one knows where or when he came from," Riley starts, glancing between the two of them as though to ensure they’re listening. “Some say he was a deserter from the civil war. Others say he was just a stranger passing through Bishop, or maybe a bounty hunter, searching for a runaway prisoner. Or maybe he _was_ the runaway prisoner.”

Darcy snorts at that and Riley sends her a stern look. She mimes zipping her mouth closed. “His origins are unclear, but from what I’ve heard, most stories seem to share the same elements of his death. The man was a stranger in Bishop and the men… well, they didn’t take too kindly to him. In the middle of winter, they ambushed him. Tied his arms and legs together and threw him into McCreedy’s Lake. The story varies on whether he drowned or froze to death... Maybe it was a bit of both.”

Darcy swallows down a mouthful of single malt whiskey. “That’s awful!”

Riley wiggles his eyebrows, obviously enjoying the role of storyteller. “Well that’s not the worst of it. See, the legend goes that his spirit got stuck in the water and he couldn’t pass onto the next life, ‘cause no one ever found his body. So he wanders the waters of Bishop, searching for those who done him in... only, it’s been so long that he’s forgotten who dunnit, hasn’t he? So any old bugger will do, and sometimes, on a clear night, they say you can hear his call- a whisper on the winds telling you to ‘keep away’- because if he finds you, he’ll wrap his clammy hands around your neck and sew ice through your veins.”

 “ _Riley_ ,” Sam sighs, sending a long-suffering look at his partner.

“What?” Riley exclaims, indignant. “The lady asked for a ghost story!”

Sam rolls his eyes, shaking his head. Darcy sits up properly on the sofa and takes a generous sip of whiskey. It burns all the way down. “It’s all right Sam,” she sends him a comforting smile despite the unease settling in the pit of her gut. “I _did_ ask.”

“ _See_ , the lady asked,” Riley smirks at Sam and Darcy bites her lip, holding back a grin. Sam huffs, throwing his hands into the air and Darcy and Riley laugh.

“How’s he manage to move between the waters?” Darcy asks eventually. “Wouldn’t you think he’d just stick here?”

“Ah,” Riley hums, eyes glittering. “See, the story varies here, too. Some say it’s because the men- well maybe they fished his body outta the water and chopped him into pieces, scattering his body between the McCreedy’s and the river. But my old man- he used to be real fascinated by the Winter Soldier, and he reckons he used to only stick around McCreedy’s. But when they built that canal back in the forties into the river, he followed the water and started showing up elsewhere.”

Darcy and Sam share a look; Sam, mildly exasperated, Darcy, uneasy. “Have you ever seen him?”

“Me?” Riley shakes his head emphatically. “Lord no. If you ask me it’s a load of shit cooked up the scare the bejeezus out of ya, but my Dad swore black and blue that he saw him.”

“Where?”

He gives Darcy a queer look and she schools her features into something more neutral. She shrugs. “I like ghost stories,” she lies. “They’re interesting.”

“If you say so,” he murmurs, and carries on, evidently enjoying being a storyteller. “When my old man was in his early twenties, he went out crabbing in his cousin’s rowboat. It was late spring, dusk, and he’s out on the water- out in the estuary- when all of a sudden it gets awful cold. Like the warmth had been leached from his soul; that kind of cold that cuts you to the quick.”

Darcy bites the inside of her cheek and she takes another sip of her whiskey, the taste barely registering. Riley carries on, unaffected. “He pulled up those crab pots real quick, let me tell you. But… he hears this sound- like a moan, lonely and miserable. He looks up from the pot he’d been checking, and there was the Winter Soldier not ten feet away, standing in the water. Just… starin’ at him.” Riley shakes his head, as though trying to banish the image from his mind. “The coldest pair of eyes he ever saw, and he couldn’t shake this unwelcome feeling, like the guy had looked into his soul and found him wanting.”

“Then what happened?” Darcy asks, breathless. She’s hunched forwards she realises, and she coughs, trying to hide her interest.

Riley’s eyes flash with satisfaction, catching her out anyway and she flushes slightly. “It was like the Soldier had frozen him in place,” he says, voice lowering as though telling her and Sam a secret. “He couldn’t move; couldn’t shout, couldn’t even breathe. The Soldier drew closer and dad _swore_ he saw the water freezing around him- in the middle of spring no less! And dad thinks for sure that he’s a dead man- the guy’s got sinister coming off him in waves and he’s never been so cold in all his life. And then- and here’s the clincher- _and then_ the Soldier comes so close that he could touch the side of the boat if he wanted to, and he says one word. Just one.” He pauses, glancing between the two of them and winking at Sam, who seems drawn into the story despite himself.

“What did he say?” Sam sighs, rolling his eyes good-naturedly.

“He says ‘ _leave_ ’. ‘ _Leave_ ,’ he tells my old man, in this voice like shattered glass, and Dad- well he’s scared fucking shitless isn’t he? So he fuckin’ scarpers. Clears out as fast as those oars will let him and damn near capsizes the boat, convinced the Soldier’s chasing after him.

“Only… when he looks back, there’s nothing there. No soldier, no ice. Nothing but that damn crabpot and the wind.”

The room falls quiet and Riley glances between the two of them, looking satisfied.

“That’s some ghost story,” Darcy rasps eventually. The pleasant buzz of before now well and truly gone, replaced with a chill she can’t quite manage to shake.

“It’d better be,” Riley drawls, smirking slightly. “I heard it enough times from the old man. It was the last time he ever went near the waters around here and it used to drive Joey and I crazy. But some of the people here, strike me dead but they’ll swear to ya that the Winter Soldier, _he’s_ harmless; it ain’t him you gotta fear ‘cause he’s just an omen. A warning of sorts.”

She tilts her head, confused. “For what?”

“Death. He turns up around those marked for death, or those who’ve just died, so he can try to piggyback his way into heaven. ‘Cause here’s the kicker to the whole story- dad’s cousin- the one he borrowed the boat from? Well the next day, his cousin went out onto the river and the thing sprung a leak and he drowned.”

Darcy suddenly and inexplicably feels close to tears and she looks away, wiping at her eyes and trying to pass the action off as being tired. The pie she half-gorged herself on sits heavy in her stomach and the taste of alcohol in her mouth has turned sour.

She doesn’t fool Sam. “Now look what you’ve done,” he chastises Riley, “you’ve made the lovely lady cry.”

Riley pinks, in embarrassment or mortification she’s not certain. “Shit Darcy, I’m sorry.”

She forces out a laugh and holds up a hand to wave off his apologies. “It’s not your fault- it’s just really sad.” She sniffs, uncaring of how unseemly she must look. At least her mascara is waterproof. “I can’t imagine how lonely it would be.”

“Aw don’t worry Darcy,” Riley smiles at her and she returns it, albeit shakily and a little red around the eyes. “It’s just a ghost story- it ain’t real.”

She huffs a laugh and looks down at the empty tumbler in her lap. The crystal shines brightly under the dim lounge room lights. She’s seen him twice now and there are too many parallels to the stories for her to mark it out as anything else. “Yeah I know,” she says wetly, and she fakes another laugh. The image of his body, floating in the water refuses to leave her mind and she digs her fingernails into the soft flesh of her palm. “Just a ghost story. Nothing to be scared or sad about.”

But she’s lying, of course.

There’s plenty to be scared and sad about.

 

[1] For what a barn owl sounds like: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDmRmRb2OpE> and  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_J1VCCC_So>


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I did NOT mean for it to take this long to get the next chapter out. I've been working on this on and off ever since I posted the first chapter... unfortunately there's no guarantee the next chapter will be out expediently. These updates are long, and they take a fair amount of effort for me to create, so please forgive how long it may take <3 <3 <3

##  Friday

Darcy wakes to a throbbing headache and a mouth that tastes of dead things and mistakes.

“Ugh,” she groans, and rolls over, burying her face into the covers. “Whyyyyy.” There’s no reply. Darcy groans again, but a growing sense of nausea sends her up and out of bed, flying from her bedroom and across the hall to the bathroom where she dry heaves into the toilet bowl.

“Fuuck,” she moans when the worst of it is done. Her head throbs unpleasantly. “Gramps that whiskey is a fucking _killer_.”

There is a light knock from the door and Darcy looks up, startled. Sam stands awkwardly in the doorway, looking unfairly well-rested- she must have forgotten to close the bathroom door. He doesn’t even blink at her unicorn pyjamas.

“Morning,” he greets her. Darcy stares up at him miserably. “Sleep well?”

“I should be asking you that,” she murmurs. She feels marginally better, but she’s not sure how well she’ll feel if she were to stand up. Sam shrugs.

“Riley snores,” he says. Darcy grins.

“I’d have thought you’d be used to that by now.”

“Oh, I am. I still like to complain about it though; he likes to pretend that he doesn’t.” Sam hands over a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen; she waves away the painkiller but downs the water in one long drink, grimacing at the way it sloshes in her empty stomach.

“Thanks,” she murmurs.

“You ready to get up?”

Darcy thinks on it carefully, and errs on the side of caution, shaking her head. “Give me a minute.”

Sam sighs and sits gingerly on the edge of the bathtub. Darcy watches him warily; she may like Sam and let him stay in her house, but he is still, in essence, a stranger.

“Thanks for last night,” he starts, voice low. Darcy’s eyes widen in surprise. “I know it wasn’t the best of circumstances, but we appreciated the inclusion.” He looks down at his hands, turning the little pill bottle over and Darcy waits patiently for him to say more. “Bishop is… well it’s a small town, and there are a lot of conservatives here.”

She sucks in a breath of realisation. “Hey man, you don’t need to thank me; you guys are awesome- you’re welcome over here whenever you want!”

“Thanks,” he smiles wryly. “We came to Bishop for a change, you know? The city was too busy and loud for us, and Riley wanted to come back- be with his ma.”

“Do you like it here?”

Sam lifts his shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “It’s alright. The water’s nice and the town’s cute, I guess. But I could live in a hovel and still be happy, as long as Riley was around.”

Darcy bites her lip, holding back a smile. “You are disgustingly sweet, Sam Wilson.”

He laughs softly and straightens a little, putting the pill bottle down on the sink. “Riley thinks so too.” His smile turns teasing. “You got anyone special back home, Lewis?”

Darcy snorts and flaps her hand. “Nah. There was a guy a few years ago, but in the end we thought it better we saw other people. Haven’t found anyone that’s piqued my interests since.”

Sam nods slowly, and he stands up. “Don’t let Riley know that. Or his mother. Chances are they’ll try their hands a matchmaking with you.”

Darcy cackles. “They can certainly try. I don’t think they’ll have much luck though.”

“I don’t know,” Sam drawls, sticking his hands into his pockets, “Emily can be deceivingly resourceful when she wants to be.” He tilts his head. “Say- did you want to come over for breakfast? I’d cook something for you here, but,” he smiles ruefully, “I may have snooped around your kitchen and couldn’t find much in the way of hangover-worthy food. But Emily and Riley cook up a mean breakfast.” He leans down slightly, voice conspiratorial, “Emily makes hash browns. _From scratch_.”

Darcy laughs again. “That sounds really nice. Just- uh- gimme a couple of minutes so I can get dressed and stuff.”

He laughs softly. “No worries, Lewis,” he drawls and leaves her to it, wandering out of the bathroom and Darcy hears him thunder down the stairs, tread heavy on the wood. Darcy breathes out slowly and stands up, sighing in relief when her head doesn’t try to split itself in two. She stumbles over to the wash basin and plucks out her toothbrush, cleaning her mouth viciously to try and rid it of the awful taste of bile. It mostly works, and she restrains the urge to eat half to tube of toothpaste to erase the rest of it. She staggers back out to her bedroom and gets dressed, hopping clumsily into a sweater and some comfortable tights, and ties her hair into a sloppy bun. She smiles at her reflection when she’s done, feeling like shit but at least looking a little more put together.

“You got nothing to prove,” she reassures her reflection.

Wisely, it says nothing in reply.

* * *

Riley and Sam’s place is a spacious annex on the side of Riley’s original house, where his mother still lives, kitted out for accessibility and comfort. True to his stories last night, the entire bottom floor is filled with an unholy amount of doilies and crochet, but Darcy finds she kind of likes it.

Riley’s mother Emily sits in a recliner chair, nursing a book and a cup of coffee when they arrive, but she springs up easily, smiling at the three of them happily. She still wears pyjama pants- flannel things with little sheep on them and Darcy feels instantly better about her messy state of dress (the lack of reaction to her unicorns makes perfect sense now too). Her hair falls in soft waves around her face, a mix of blonde and grey that reminds Darcy of one of her old university professors.

“Back again, darling?” she greets her son, and she bends down to kiss his cheek. “Hello dear,” she straightens and presses another kiss to Sam’s cheek before taking Darcy’s hand. Her hands are warm and soft, but there is a large, angry patch of skin on the inside of her wrist. Her smile is bright, eyes kind. “You must be Darcy Lewis; Jocelyn’s girl. I’m Emily.”

Darcy’s eyes widen in surprise. “You knew my mom?”

Emily shrugs, and lets go of Darcy’s hands. “Acquaintances, mostly. She was a few grades below me in high school, but she dated my best friend’s brother for a few years before they graduated. She was always so lovely- very talented with a paint brush, if I recall.”

Darcy smiles unevenly. Her mother can still be something of a sore spot, but she has many memories of sitting down with her and smearing her chubby little fingers across white canvas and paint, or clumsily sketching her mother, or the neighbour’s cat, or the little pot plants Darcy sometimes managed to convince her ma to buy (they usually died within a few weeks, but Darcy didn’t care). “She was,” she tells Emily. “But accounting paid better.”

Emily huffs a soft laugh. “I’d imagine it does. Darcy I’m so sorry to hear about your grandmother; she was a wonderful woman. Always very generous.”

Darcy nods her head. “Thank-you.”

Riley wheels over to the kitchen. “Darcy’s come over for breakfast, ma,” he tells her, and Emily brightens, following her son.

“Oh that sounds lovely. I got some fresh eggs this morning, and there’s plenty of ham left over from the other day… how does a ham, spinach and ricotta frittata sound?”

Darcy’s mouth waters just at the thought of it. “Amazing.”

Sam elbows Darcy in the ribs, smirking slightly. “I may have promised Darcy hash browns,” he confesses, and Riley sends his partner an exasperated look, but if anything Emily seems even more enthusiastic.

“You and those hash browns,” Riley complains, pulling out pans and a chopping board. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you loved them more than me.”

“They’re like crack,” Sam snickers, and invites Darcy to join him at the counter. She perches herself on one of the stools- they’re lower than she’s used to, to account for the custom benches, and she sighs gustily, leaning against the cold melamine with her elbow. Emily puts some soft, jazzy music on whilst they work on breakfast, and Darcy is content to watch Emily and Riley work together like a finely tuned unit, laughing when Riley bickers with Sam about various things.

“So how long do you plan on staying in Bishop, Darcy?” Emily asks at some point, packing the used utensils in the dishwasher as breakfast cooks (Darcy had offered to help clean, but she’d been firmly denied). Darcy sits up a little straighter in her stool.

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” she confesses, smiling ruefully. “My original plan was about a week, but…” she shrugs helplessly, thinking about Riley’s story from last night. “I’m not sure now… There’s a couple of things I want to find while I’m still here, and I don’t know what I want to do with grams’ house. I wouldn’t mind staying here a few more weeks, get things packed away if I need to- my boss wouldn’t mind. She already told me to take as much time as I need.”

Emily smiles approvingly. “That’s very generous of her. What do you do?”

Darcy is abruptly reminded of ‘meeting the parents’, back when she was seeing Ian. She bites her lip, holding back a smile. “I’m a political science major, but uh- my boss is actually an astrophysicist.” Three pairs of eyebrows rise in surprise. “I’m her assistant... I take her notes, cache datasets, secure us funding, make sure she eats three meals a day- those kinds of things. It’s not very glamorous, to be honest- or it didn’t used to be- but we’ve got a better funder these days- one that actually pays the bills, which is nice.”

She nods. “Sounds like a busy lifestyle.”

Darcy laughs, thinking of the old days when more often than not, their days were spent lazing around, waiting for Jane’s machines to pick something up. “It is now.”

Emily sends her a commiserating look, and pulls out several mugs from a slide-out cupboard. “Coffee?”

Darcy makes a semi-indecent noise in the back of her throat, eyeing the French press on the counter. “Coffee sounds amazing.”

She raises a brow, looking a little smug as she spoons generous spoonful’s of ground coffee into the press. “A coffee lover?”

“Yess,” she hums, and Emily laughs at the way she watches her make the coffee. “It’s my one weakness. That and Disney movies.”

“Oh, you’ll fit right in, Darcy,” Riley laughs, pointing at Sam and Emily. “These two are notorious coffee addicts.”

“Unlike that one,” Sam adds darkly, eyeing his partner with mock disgust, “who for whatever reason hates it.”

“Coffee is the drink of sinners and the deranged,” Riley says flatly, but his eyes glitter with thinly-veiled amusement.

“Sometimes I wonder how you’re my son,” Emily laments. All four of them laugh, and she winks at Darcy as she pours the freshly boiled water into the press. She makes a cup of tea while she’s at it, and Riley smiles at her gratefully. Darcy’s heart pangs a little at their kindness and casual familiarity- she knows from experience that it takes a special kind of people to accept a veritable stranger into their home and treat them as their own. Grams was the same, and the thought of never being able to talk to her again hurts.

She smiles, a little plastic and brittle around the edges. “So have you always lived here?” she asks, her voice perhaps a touch too bright. “I- uh- don’t remember you from when I was a kid, sorry.”

“Oh no,” Emily waves off her apology, unconcerned. “This was actually Andrew- my late husband’s- parents’ home. We used to live in Bishop proper, but after Riley and Sam came back, this house was easier to renovate.”

Darcy nods, glancing around the place. The living area is all open, the furniture sparse but sturdy and carefully crafted, and though there’s certainly a little too much crochet for Darcy’s taste, the pieces add a certain homey charm to the space that she likes. “It’s a very lovely home," she demurs, and Sam and Emily beam proudly.

“It is, isn’t it? The boys and a few of their army friends fixed the place up- they did such a good job,” Emily sighs, glancing out the kitchen window to the patio and the garden beyond it. Their house- though technically neighbouring her grams’ place- is just as isolated, and Darcy’s fairly certain McCreedy’s Lake is actually quite far away. “Of course, it doesn’t have the same view as Evelyn’s, but I rather like the forest. And Andrew never much liked living near the water.”

Darcy shares a look with Riley, and she bites the inside of her lip. She knows all about Riley’s father’s aversion to water. “You’re all welcome to grams’ pier,” she tells them, and Emily smiles at her kindly. Darcy shrugs, “If I’m not around, it’ll be nice to the thing to get some use. Though I gotta warn you, if you’re thinking it might be a prime fishing spot- it ain’t. The most the lake’s ever thrown up was an old tire and some duckweed.”

Riley cackles and winks at her. “A tragedy.”

“Riley hates fishing,” Sam informs her and Darcy rolls her eyes at him.

“Really? I never would have guessed.”

“If I wanted to sit around and do nothing, Sam, I’d go to chur-” he breaks off when his mother sends him a dark look, and he colours lightly, sending an apologetic look at Darcy. “Um- sorry.”

Darcy waves her hand at him, grinning. She’s no doubt grams would have chastised him for a comment like that. “It’s okay; I’m agnostic.”

Riley breathes a sigh of relief. “That’s lucky; I don’t think I could get my foot into my mouth, even if I tried.”

Darcy lets out a startled snort, and Sam covers his eyes with a hand, groaning. Riley grins at them wickedly, eyes sparkling with mischief. “You’re terrible, Muriel,” his partner sighs, and Riley laughs anew. Emily shrugs at her, the joke passing over both their heads. She passes the French press over to Sam and turns back to the stove, busying herself with the rest of breakfast and Darcy leans back in her stool, watching the three of them interact. She feels warm and content and _happy_.

##  Saturday

Darcy eyes the gardens outside with no small amount of distrust.

It’s stupid, she tells herself. Ridiculous. Ghosts _aren’t real_ , or at least, they shouldn’t be. But here she is, half-convinced her grandmother’s property is being haunted, all because of a well-told ghost story and a handful of glimpses of a man who _might_ be a ghost, but almost might just be a hobo that’s taken to creeping around her property. It would, at least, explain the missing coffee.

(Not the freezing, though. Darcy tries to pass it off as grief-addled observations, but deep down, she doubts it.)

The whole thing has her on edge; on the one hand, she wants to stick her head in the sand and obtusely act like nothing is wrong. She wants to be brave enough to walk outside, pick the lemons from the aging lemon tree in the yard, and bask in the noon-day sun, eating lemon curd by the spoonful and grimacing at the tartness, sour enough to strip a layer of enamel from her teeth, just like her grams used to make. She could drag one of the aging deck chairs out into the garden, and listen to the peaceful sounds of the wind through the trees, the quiet hum of the life around her.

On the other hand, there is a part of her that is _terrified_ by all of this. Terrified of her ‘ghost’, terrified of being alone in this big, dark house full of memories, terrified of being forced to step up to the plate and act like an actual _adult_. She _hates_ this part of her; the Lewis’ raised Darcy as many things, and a coward was not one of them. It has her pausing at the threshold of her back door, hand frozen atop the door handle as she wishes furiously for the courage to step outside.

In the end, her wants overthrow her fears, just as they always do. The door swings open with a little more force than she means, slamming against the doorframe and Darcy jumps at the sound of the glass rattling in it frame. She breathes a faint sigh of relief when the glass fails to break, and hurries across the patio and down the stairs, out into the sunlight, so bright she’s forced to squint, pain lancing through her head at the change in brightness. Her plastic wicker basket is a light weight in the crook of her elbow, and it bounces against her hip as she walks.

The grass is cool beneath her feet and she pauses at the threshold of the yard, digging her toes into the wet grass. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.” She smiles at herself sheepishly. It’s a lie, but the horrible reference at least it makes her feel a little better about herself. “Lemons, Darcy-girl. You just want some lemons.” she murmurs, feeling stupid all over again. She strides across the grass with purpose, back straight and proud as though somehow she can hide the churning unease in her gut.

The lemon tree is an old and stunted thing ill-suited for the cold, with twisted, swollen limbs and diseased-looking leaves, covered with mildew from a recent outbreak of scale that her grams had not quite managed to curb, and stunted by decades of cold winters. And yet despite this, the tree has always provided bountiful fruit, and the mulch at the base of its trunk is littered with split and rotting lemons, despite the lateness of the season. Her granddad used to insist it gave them fruit out of sheer spite. Darcy can’t help but agree.

Darcy smiles at a crow that bounces away from her approach, glaring at her with distaste, and plucks a leaf from a less-diseased stem. She crumples it between her fingers and breathes in the sharp citrus scent before letting it fall limply to the ground. The smell lingers on her fingers, the skin left slightly tacky from sap and oil. The scent is familiar to her; her grams used to always make lemon-meringue pie when Darcy came over as a child, and there’s nothing she would like more than to be sitting back down at that rickety kitchen table, scraping down the sides of the saucepan with a spatula to eat the final morsels of curd whilst grams rolls the pastry out with her old marble rolling pin.

Darcy moves gingerly around the tree, avoiding the broken and rotting fruit on the ground and trying hard to step lightly on the sharper pieces of shredded wood and bark her grams favoured for mulch. She still winces when a particularly sharp piece stabs her in her soft instep; she really needs to start remembering to wear shoes. She picks the first fruit in reach; it gives a twitch of resistance before coming free, and the branch bounces back with a soft rustle of leaves. Darcy scores her fingernail across the waxy surface and the sharp lemon scent fills the air. She picks as many as she can; with winter just around the corner, what fruit she doesn’t pick now will likely go bad very soon.

A cold breeze cuts through her soft sweater and Darcy bites her lip, shivering. A crow rattles from a neighbouring tree and she glances over at it on instinct.

The lemon in her hand falls from her loose grip.

Darcy stares in horror at the man standing beside the skeletal limbs of a birch tree. The edges of him are sharp and defined today, his dark clothes a stark contrast beside the pale limbs of the tree.

He watches her, the expression on his haggard face unreadable, gaze sharp and unwavering.

Unaware of the visitor, the crow in the tree rattles again, bouncing to another branch and Darcy trembles.

“Why are you here?” she rasps, voice embarrassingly thin and wavering. “I don’t understand!”

The soldier’s mouth moves, but his answering words are soundless; a strange rustling, hissing sound, like a cold gust of air blowing through fallen leaves. Something close to irritation seems to cross his face and he takes a half-step towards her. Darcy stumbles backwards in shock and she yelps in pain when she stands on another piece of bark. She finds herself suddenly and inexplicably furious.

“Go _away!_ ” she cries out, and she grabs a lemon from her basket and throws it at him. It flies straight and true, crashing through him before she can even think of exactly what she’s doing.

The Soldier’s eyes widen in shock and his mouth opens, that strange rustling, hissing sound escaping and Darcy watches in horror as his image fades out of existence, like ink dispersing on water. She stumbles backwards in shock and fear. She’d suspected he was truly a phantom but to see such definitive proof has her breath catching in her throat.

“Fuck this,” Darcy breathes.

She flees. The basket of lemons bounces against her hip with almost bruising force and her heavy, frantic tread beats loudly on the wooden slats of the veranda. The door slams behind her, glass rattling in its frame; a familiar sound that sets her teeth on edge.

Darcy drops the basket onto the kitchen table and it topples over, lemons rolling off the table and landing on the floor with a series of dull _thuds_. She ignores them and leans over the sink, curling forwards as though hiding from the Soldier. Her hands tremble uncontrollably, and she pulls in great lungful’s of air, as though she’s just run a marathon. “Fuck,” she says again to the silent house. “ _Fuck!_ ”

The sound of him speaking- that haunting, rasping sound- echoes in her head and she chokes back a terrified sob. Her legs collapse beneath her and Darcy crumples to the ground, head resting against the outdated melamine covered chipwood that smells ever so faintly of damp wood. The image of him dissipating like smoke on the wind- the look of surprise on his pale face- refuses to leave; every time she closes her eyes, it’s there. _God_ \- she doesn’t know what to do with this new information. A part of Darcy had still been holding onto the hope that he was just some crazy stalker, or a hobo with a liking for skinny dipping. To have actual, _visual_ confirmation of a haunting fucks her up more than she’d thought possible.

She’s crying, she realises. Big, warm tears that sting at the corner of her eyes, her breath hitching in her throat.

“I don’t understand,” Darcy sobs. “I don’t _understand!_ ”

Why is he here? Why now? Is it because of grams? Never in her life has she ever felt unsafe in her grandparent’s home; it had always been a sanctuary for Darcy, even after her mother’s death. But now the house just feels old and sad, and the Soldier- and everything his presence implies- scares her. She doesn’t want to be in this house anymore.

(And here she was hoping she’d be able to keep the place.)

Darcy shifts on the ground, curling into herself, and cries.

 

 

In the end, the curd is too bitter to be eaten. Darcy doesn’t dare go outside again for the rest of the day.

 

##  Sunday

 “ _Jane speaking_.”

Darcy breathes in an unsteady breath. “Heya Janie.”

Jane makes a soft exclamation of delighted surprise. “ _Darcy! How are you?_ ”

“I’m okay,” she lies. She wraps the cord of the out-of-date phone on her index finger. “Kinda- ah- kinda lonely. It’s weird having no one here anymore.”

“ _Oh Darce_ ,” Jane sighs. “ _Did you want Thor and me to come up? We’re mostly sorting out observational data at the moment anyway_.”

Darcy worries at the inside of her lip and glances out the kitchen window uneasily. “It’s okay,” she says softly. “I’ve made friends with the neighbours; they’re very nice. Very friendly. It’s just strange, is all.”

Jane sighs again, and Darcy hears over the crackling phoneline the sharp and stilted sound of her tapping on a keyboard. “ _This sucks_.”

Darcy raises a brow. “What, me being stuck in a big empty house, or you being stuck sorting data with _Thor_?”

Jane snickers. _“How about both? All of this sucks_.” Thor, as though made to disprove every jock stereotype there is, is astonishingly intelligent and creative, but statistics is the one art that he absolutely cannot do. He’d be the perfect match for Jane- kind, thoughtful and disgustingly sweet- were it not for the fact that he is utterly incapable of helping out when it comes to sorting data. It’s probably why Jane still keeps Darcy around, if she’s honest. Maths has always been Darcy’s strong suit, and sorting through Jane’s is- well, not exactly her _favourite_ thing to do, but she’s certainly good at it.

She pokes at the inside of her cheek with her tongue and twines the phone cord between her fingers absently. “I don’t know what to do,” she confesses. “I wanna- I wanna stay; this is my grandparent’s home, you know? I grew up here… but I hate Bishop, and…” she trails off, finding her gaze listing back towards the kitchen window with its distant view of the lake. There’s nothing out there but falling leaves right now, but Darcy knows better. “There’s something out there Jane. It sounds- sounds crazy, I know, but-” she swallows, and rests her hand flat of the table to try and disguise the returning tremors, “I can feel it _watching_ me.”

There is a long silence on the other side of the phone, and for half a moment Darcy regrets saying anything. But Jane is her best friend; she knows she can trust her. “ _Darcy_ ,” Jane says carefully. And bless her, but there is only concern in her voice. “ _Are you being watched right now?_ ”

She blinks back the burning sensation behind her eyes. “No. I don’t think so- I can’t feel him, bu-”

“ _Him?_ ” Jane says sharply. “ _Darcy do you know who’s stalking you? This is bad- I gotta- I’m gonna send Thor to you, okay? He’ll sort this all out._ ”

“ _No_!” she says, panicky. She clenches her jaw. “No,” she reiterates, firmer. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s nothing serious.”

“ _Nothing serious? Darcy, you’ve_ just _told me you feel unsafe in your own home!_ ”

“I did _not_ say that!”

“ _No, but you certainly implied it!_ ”

Darcy sighs heavily and rubs at the bridge of her nose tiredly. “I… probably did. But it’s fine; really. I want to take care of this myself, and anyway, the guys next door are good people; they’re ex-Airforce.”

Jane makes a soft sound of appreciation. “ _Flyboys_ ,” she sighs happily. Darcy is well aware of Jane’s fondness for pilots. “ _Maybe you should go over- ask for a cup of sugar_.” Darcy bites her lip in amusement at Jane’s lewdness.

“Yeah… I don’t think they’re looking for my kind of sugar.”

There’s an elongated pause and Darcy swears she can hear the cogs turning in Jane’s head. “ _Oh_ ,” she says eventually. “ _Ohhh_.”

“Mhmm.”

“ _Well, that’s disappointing. You’ve been single for far too long_.”

“Jane! Just because _you’re_ happily nearly-married to a living, breathing men’s fitness magazine doesn’t mean the rest of us are searching for the same.”

“ _Alright, alright_ ,” Jane huffs. “ _I know the drill; ‘you’re not looking for love. You don’t care if you’re single or not. You don’t need to tie your identity to the existence of a relationship. You don’t want a partner who won’t understand your sexuality. I do listen, you know._ ”

“If you know the drill so well, why you gotta keep pushing it?” she asks grumpily.

“ _I just want you to be happy. And… well, I’ve always wanted to go on one of those double-date things the movies keep ranting about_.”

Darcy laughs- a short, sharp sound that seems more vicious than it should be. “You are ridiculous.”

“ _So you keep saying_.”

“I miss you.”

“ _Jeez Darce, it’s only been a week_.”

She snorts. Outside, a pair of mourning doves balance on the bird feeder hanging from the rafters of the veranda. One of them coos softly at its partner, the sound plaintive and achingly sad. “ _Do you have any idea how much longer you’re going to stay there for?_ ”

“I don’t know,” Darcy sighed. “Another week, maybe? Maybe longer; there’s fifty years’ worth of stuff here to sort out and pack away. I might see if I can get Sam and Riley to give me a hand.”

“ _Are you going to sell the place?_ ”

She clenches her jaw. The thought of selling the house turns her stomach, but thinking of other people living here- or just letting the house sit unattended- doesn’t feel much better. Homes are meant to be lived in… but this house… there’s something _wrong_ here. Something she never noticed as a child. “I don’t know,” she says eventually. “I don’t think I want to. But it’s-” she stares down at the scratched wood of the table, the image blurring as tears threaten to spill. Her sinuses burn. “It’s- _ah_ \- it’s too much right now.”

“ _Aw Darcy. I’m so sorry._ ”

She sniffles and rubs at her eyes again. “Christmas is gonna suck,” she sniffles. Jane huffs a sigh over the line.

“ _Thor and I will be there; it’ll be okay_.”

She huffs. “Thanks Jane.”

“ _Remember; we love you_.”

“Yeah, I know. Love you too.”

Darcy hears the rumbling timbre of Thor’s voice and Jane’s voice becomes muffled and distorted, as though holding her hand over the phone. She returns soon enough. “ _Thor wanted to talk to you, if you wanted to_.”

Darcy laughs wetly. “Yeah, put him on.”

There’s a momentarily fumble of sound, before she hears a familiar hum and the rumble of Thor’s voice. “ _Darcy_.”

She breathes out slowly, the tense line of her shoulders loosening at the sound of his voice. “Hey.”

“ _Are you well? You sound tired_.”

Darcy laughs shakily. “Yeah, I’ve not been sleeping so great,” she confesses.

“ _I am sorry to hear that_ ,” he hums. Darcy digs her thumbnail into the soft wood grain- a bad habit she picked up from her grandfather somewhere along the way. “ _Tell me Darcy, what troubles you?_ ”

“ _Ha_ ,” she laughs mirthlessly. “What doesn’t?”

Thor sighs. She’s not sure if he’s disappointed in her or not. “ _Do your troubles have anything to do with our last conversation, my friend?_ ”

Darcy sits up straight in the chair, and glances sharply out at the yard and the lake beyond it. “Why would you think that?” she asks warily. Thor rumbles a soft laugh.

“ _I like to think that I know you well, Darcy. You rarely ask questions- those that matter- without purpose. You have seen one, haven’t you?_ ”

She breathes out shakily. “I... maybe. I think so.”

“ _This spirit… is it your grandmother?_ ”

“I wish.” Darcy wishes suddenly that she were able to put the phone on speaker. “It’s a man. A stranger.”

“ _And you have never encountered him before? Not even when you were a child?_ ”

“Never. But I think he’s been around for a long time. My neighbour- his dad claimed he’d been visited by a ghost when he was younger and his description fits. I-I keep seeing him. He’s always around the lake- there’s a town legend that some guy froze to death out there, and now he haunts the place. And Riley-” her fingers wrap tightly around the phone cord, “Riley says he’s an omen of death.”

“ _Riley?_ ”

“Ah-” Darcy pulls a face before she remembers Thor can’t see it. “He’s my neighbour. He lives with his partner and mother. Riley calls him the Winter Soldier.”

“ _I see_ ,” Thor say gravely. There’s no recognition in his voice. “ _And you fear this… Soldier, is truly an omen? A portent of death to come, or merely a soul that may linger where those have passed? It would explain why he has only appeared to you know._ ”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Darcy says helplessly. “I try to remember that you said most spirits are benign, but…”

“ _He scares you._ ”

Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes begin to burn all over again. Her chest half feels like it’s going to collapse. “I don’t know what to do, Thor. This house is meant to be a happy place, but everything’s just turned _wrong_.”

She’s crying again. The kitchen blurs and Darcy hunches forward over the table, knocking her glasses off and covering her eyes with a hand. The tears creep past anyway, sliding down her cheeks and making her skin itch uncomfortably. Thor makes comforting sounds over the phone and Darcy wishes desperately to be back home. She feels so alone in this silent tomb. “ _Do not feel like you must stay in a place you do not feel welcome in, Darcy_ ,” he murmurs, voice solemn. Darcy is grateful he doesn’t offer her meaningless platitudes. “ _You can always come back; there are people we can find who can do this for you_.”

“No,” she breathes. She sniffles unflatteringly. “No, I want to do this myself. I don’t want some stranger sorting through the house.”

“ _I understand_ ,” Thor says. Darcy has half an idea that he does. “ _Then what do you wish to do with the spirit?_ ”

She sniffles again and wipes at her eyes. “What _can_ I do?”

Thor is quiet for a long moment. “ _I do not know,_ ” he confesses. Darcy’s heart falls. “ _But I can make inquiries. My mother- and possibly my brother- may know more, though I doubt Loki will want to speak with me_.”

Darcy pulls a face. Loki is, in all definitions of the word, an ass. She doubts very much that he will be bothered to help, but Frigga, at least, is kind. “Thank-you,” she says gratefully.

“ _You are most welcome, Darcy_ ,” Thor replies. Darcy grips tighter at the phone to stop herself from glancing back at the window. “ _If you see him again, do not hesitate to call. And if you wish for us to join you, you need only ask._ ”

She huffs a mirthless laugh. After years of know Thor, she’s used to his outdated turns of phrase, but sometimes they still catch her out, and she’s reminded of his distinct Otherness. “Thanks, big guy.”

“ _It is no problem. Will we see you soon?_ ”

She hums noncommittally. Even with the Soldier, she doesn’t want to leave this place any time soon. There’s too much history to the house and this old, backwater town for her to just let go of it all, for all that she tried. “We’ll see.” She glances at the clock mounted on the wall beside the fridge. Half-past two. Darcy is suddenly overcome by the urge to get up and _do something_. “I think I’m going to go for walk,” she tells him. The day is pleasant and warmer than usual this late in the season, and she’s not seen Bishop proper for years.

Thor rumbles his agreement. “ _That sounds wonderful,”_ he says. “ _I will give Jane your love_.”

“Thanks… and uh- thanks again, Thor.”

“ _Enjoy your walk, Darcy_.”

She grins, feeling better than she has for days. “I will.”

Thor hangs up and she spends a moment absently listening to the dial tone on the phoneline before she shakes herself out of her stupor. She puts the phone back in its cradle and stands, hunting through the house for her keys and wallet, and grabbing a cardigan and a beanie to force over her unruly hair.

The drive into Bishop proper is sinfully short, and Darcy feels almost guilty for her laziness (almost). The roads around here are picturesque, hugging the river like a clingy child. The water is an unattractive brown colour, too close to the ocean to be any cleaner, but the trees that line its banks are tall and proud, their leaves a stunning mix of jewelled tones that make Darcy feel warm and cosy inside her car. The houses on the other side of the road are on the quaint side, a little too small and run down for most people’s tastes, but Darcy thinks they’re characterful. She might hate Bishop for its small-town mentality, but she can’t deny its loveliness.

She stops her car in the park on the outskirts of town and steps out, sucking in a sharp breath that burns her sinus at the cold, brisk air that cuts through her clothes. Darcy grimaces but locks the car anyway, determined to actually _do_ something today. Fortunately, the breeze seems to have only been a one-off event, and by the time she walks over to the path that runs parallel to the river, she’s forced to remove her beanie and roll the sleeves of her cardigan up to her elbows. Darcy tucks her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she walks, her handbag slapping lightly against her waist as she walks, and stares contentedly out across the green space.

The park runs along the southern bank of the river, a long expanse of lush green grass and stately maples, their leaves a vibrant wash of red and gold. In any other place, she’s certain the park would be littered with people, out for a peaceful post-lunch stroll, but Bishop is a small town and tourists are rare. There are only a few people around the place, and none of them Darcy recognises, though she smiles at them all the same as she walks past.

Darcy takes in the scenery as she walks; on the other side of the bank, houses crowd up close to the waterline, a few trees and old boats moored against it, and there are a few grimy buoys marking crab traps dotted across the water. In the distance, she can see the old stone bridge that connects both halves of the town.

“Darcy!” a man calls out and her steps falter in surprise. She glances around, and grins when she catches sight of Riley and Sam by their van. She waves and crosses the green to join them.

“Hey,” she greets the men, bending down to kiss Riley’s cheek. Sam smiles at her warmly, and grips her arm lightly when she gives him the same treatment. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Groceries,” Riley says with a grimace.

“Emily sent us,” Sam explains, pulling out a long list from his pocket. “Said she couldn’t be bothered.”

“Typical,” Riley gripes, though there’s a cheeky glint in his eyes that suggests it’s all for show.

Darcy laughs and shakes her head. “Well yeah, but don’t you realise what grocery duties give you?”

Riley raises a brow at her in askance. “What?”

“Well, if you’ve got food duty, then you’ve got free reign of what you can buy. And eat.”

“ _Ohhh_ ,” he says, a wicked grin forming on his face. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We’re _not_ only having those disgusting microwaveable meals you like,” Sam says sternly. Riley sends him a look of devastation, but his partner remains steadfast. “Emily would slaughter me. And probably send us out to the shops _again_.”

“Two boxes of hot pockets. And poptarts,” Riley bargains. Sam pulls a face of distaste, but concedes and he whoops in victory.

“You’re disgusting,” Sam says with an exasperated smile.

“Aw, but you love me.”

Sam squeezes his shoulder and gives him a fond look. “Always.”

Darcy swallows thickly, feeling very much like an interloper on their moment of intimacy. She never really managed to find a man- or woman- who fit _her_ so seamlessly as these two seem to have managed.

Riley glances back up at her. “So watcha doing out here, Lewis?”

She shrugs. “Thought I’d go for a walk. Felt a bit cooped up back at gr- back at mine.”

The men send her a sympathetic look, but let her slip pass by unaddressed. “Mind if we joined you?”

She smiles at him wryly. “Prolonging the inevitable?”

“Yes,” Riley answers and she laughs and shakes her head.

“Be my guests. I wasn’t planning on doing anything exciting though; just a walk around town. See what’s changed, what hasn’t.”

“Now see,” Riley smirks as he rolls himself down onto the path, “the answer to that is going to be ‘very little’.”

“Yeah,” Darcy hums, gazing back to the stretch of shops across the road; most of them she remembers from her childhood, “I thought that might be the case.”

“Even McWhirty’s is still open, you know.”

Darcy laughs in surprise. “Really? _How?_ The only time people went in to buy shit from there was if they were desperate for a last minute gift.”

Riley shrugs. “Beats me. Ma reckons she sold her soul to the devil to keep the business afloat.”

She shakes her head, bemused. “Honestly.”

They reach the main path along the river and spread out, Sam on one side of Riley, Darcy on the other, closest to the water. She watches an old wooden boat bob in the murky water, suddenly remembering Riley’s story from the other night.

“Riley,” she starts, and the man glances up at her. Darcy swallows. “Did you dad ever tell you what the Winter Soldier looked like?”

His hands pause momentarily on his wheels, before picking up again. “What do you mean?”

She runs her fingers through her hair distractedly. She’s being clumsy about this. “I don’t know… just… what did he look like, I guess? His clothes, his hair… y’know, the usual stuff.”

Riley stares up at her with poorly veiled scepticism. “He’s just a ghost story, Darce. He ain’t real.”

“Yeah, I know that,” she lies, but her gaze lingers on the water. The uneasy feeling from this morning is back with a vengeance, and the bright, sunny day no longer feels so charming. “Just curious, is all.”

“Right,” Riley says, clearly not believing her. He and Sam exchange an unreadable look, and Darcy tries her best to ignore it.

They walk in silence for a time. Darcy doesn’t mind the quiet- she’s too stuck in her own head right now to make any good conversation, and Riley and Sam seem content not to push her. They do stop though when Riley spies the old ice cream parlour. “Sam!” he cries out, startling both his companions. “You gotta go buy us ice cream.”

Sam raises a brow at his partner’s imperious demand. “Do I?”

Darcy peers over at the place and smiles. She used to beg her grams to let her go there as a kid. On the hotter days of summer she’d walk all the way into town just to buy a double scoop of chocolate and peanut butter. “I haven’t been there in years,” she muses, smiling softly at the memory.

“See?” Riley says, pouting up at Sam. “She hasn’t been there in years.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he capitulates. Darcy has a suspicion he does that to a lot of Riley’s demands. “What do you want?”

“Choc-chip mint.”

He looks over at Darcy and her eyes widen in realisation. “Oh- you don’t need to get me anything!”

Sam sends her a flat look. “I insist.”

“But-”

Riley sends her an identical look. “He insists, Darcy. Throw the man a bone.” Sam pushes his shoulder in exasperation, and Riley grins. “C’mon, our treat.”

She bites her lip, and smiles at them shyly. “Then could I get the chocolate peanut butter, if they’ve got it?”

Sam pulls a face of disgust. “Really? Damn, Lewis, I thought you had taste.”

“It’s a perfectly respectable flavour combination!” Darcy says primly, feigning offence. The men snicker and Sam wanders off across the grass. “Thank-you!” she calls out after him. He sends her a wave without looking back.

With Sam gone, Riley sobers quickly. He motions to a bench a few yards away, and Darcy complies without complaint, letting him guide her over to it. She sits, the wooden slats warm from the sun.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Sam,” Riley says softly, no trace of mirth in his voice now. “He doesn’t really believe in any of this stuff… You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

Darcy presses her lips together and nods. “I think so,” she says, mouth suddenly dry. “He- I keep seeing him around the lake.” It feels strange to confess it to someone in person. “I don’t know what it means.”

“That’s why you looked so uneasy that night,” Riley muses. “You’d already seen him, hadn’t you?”

She nods again. “He froze my coffee.”

“Really?” Riley asks, sounding fascinated. Darcy sends him an exasperated look and he shakes his head, sobering. “Are you afraid of him?”

“I don’t know...” She runs a thumbnail down the grain of the old wooden seat. “A little… you said he was a-”

“An omen of death- I know.” Riley reaches out to gently take her hand, but she doesn’t look up. “But that was just embellishment in a ghost story, Darce. It’s not true.”

She shrugs helplessly. “It _feels_ real.”

“But it isn’t. And I can’t claim to know better- I’ve never seen him myself- but from what my father used to say, he was pretty benign. If he is real, then I doubt he’s gonna hurt you.”

Darcy stays quiet, unwilling to say any more, and Riley glances up. He waves unnecessarily at Sam as he crosses the road, three cups of ice cream clutched carefully in his hands.

“I got cups instead of cones,” he explains as he reaches them. He hands them out and sits down beside her. His looks like strawberry flavour and Darcy wrinkles her nose in distaste; she’s never been a fan if it.

“Thank-you,” she murmurs. Sam grins at her.

“It’s no worries,” he assures her. “Happy to treat you.”

She smiles at him and the three of them dig into the treat with gusto. The familiar mix of chocolate and peanut butter transports Darcy back to a simpler time, when she didn’t have to worry about empty homes or funeral costs or old ghosts. She’d not always been happy of course, but she can’t deny that things were simpler. God, but she misses those days.

Darcy glances out across the river, eyes running down the line of houses and across the bridg-

She stiffens, gaze returning back to the bridge, but there’s nobody there. Her grip on her spoon turns white, the sounds around her reduced to a distant, high-pitched whine. There’s nobody underneath it- just a few old shrubs and discarded trash. The ice cream on her spoon drips back into her cup, but she ignores it… she could have sworn she saw someone standing by the old foundations.

“Darcy?”

She sucks in a sharp breath and glances over at Sam. “Sorry, what?”

He looks over her in concern. “You okay? You zoned out there for a bit.”

She smiles at him shakily and forces herself to relax. “Sorry,” she says, voice carefully even. “Just got distracted.”

Sam leans back in the seat. “It’s alright- I’m sure there’s a lot on your mind right now.”

Darcy gaze strays back to the shadows beneath the bridge, but there’s nobody there. The uneasy feeling is back with a vengeance, and the ice cream in her stomach seems to have curdled. “Yeah,” she says softly. “There kind of is.”

* * *

Their ice cream finished, the three of them wander back to Sam’s van, and Darcy says her goodbyes, unwilling to linger. She walks back to her car quickly, gaze firmly centred on the town rather than the water this time. A strange, detached kind of anger seems to simmer beneath her skin as she walks, and with every step it grows, morphing into a boiling, seething tempest that refuses to settle even once inside the car and driving back to her gram’s place.

By the time she reaches home, she is furious, and she slams the car door behind her with poorly reigned violence, stalking around the house and baring her teeth at the sight of the lake. It’s silent and empty, free of life but for a few small birds that flit between the trees.

“What do you want from me?” she screams out across the water, stopping at the edge of the old pier. A pair of dove fly off, startled by her outrage. “Why are you here?”

The lake is silent. Darcy lets out an inarticulate scream of rage, but the Winter Soldier makes no sign of showing. “Fucking leave me alone!” she cries out, and she screams again, breathing heavily.

She hears a soft moan behind her, like the wind blowing through trees, and a cold chill trickles down her back. Furious, Darcy spins around, a curse on her lips, but her move is miscalculated; a foot sliding backwards to steady herself finds empty air. Her arms cartwheel, trying desperately to find some semblance of balance again but there’s nothing to hold on to.

Darcy catches sight of two wide, ice-blue eyes as she falls, and a frisson of fear runs through her.

She cries out as her body hits the surface of the lake and frigid water rushes into her mouth. Cold- so _cold_ \- like ice, tiny crystal stabbing into her soft palette. She chokes, thrashing in the water but something wraps around her ankle- _the Soldier!_ Her lungs fill with water as she chokes and she kicks out violently, but the grip on her leg seems to only grow tighter. Darcy looks around blindly- the water is dark and murky, filled with shapes and phantoms she can’t identify. She tries to breathe- can’t breathe! Can’t shout! Her body spasms, desperate to dispel the water in her lungs but there’s no air, only frozen water that burns her throat. She screams- she thinks she screams- and in her terror tries again to fight her way out of the Soldier’s grip and her head smashes into something dull and heavy-

A moment of blinding pain-

And then

Nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come and chat with me on [tumblr](http://cinnaatheart.tumblr.com/) :D


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